Thriller Conventions

In this blogpost I will explain what the typical thriller will contain. A central to plot: the justice verses the injustice. The elements of the blurred line of good and bad. The elements consisted in a thriller are enigmas, red-herrings, plot twists and cliffhangers (most noted in a thriller, such as The Birds). The sub genres contained in a thriller are mystery, crime, psychological and political;  these sub genres give thrillers an extra aspect allowing it to have that extra twist or shock. The moods available in a thriller would heighten the tension present these moods that are responsible for these are: murder, menace, mystery and paranoia. The 
characters that feature in a thriller seem to be in a dangerous mission and trying to escape from the impossible. These escapes do not have to be actiony, but always have to seem to be escaping from anything, even the most bizarre and unnatural occurrence (A fleet of birds who seem only to attack humans). The characters themselves have to seem troubled, disturbed, confided or multi-faceted morally complex). The settings provide a typical thriller setting as they are seen as dark and corrupt. 

During class, we looked at several opening scenes of different types of thrillers.

Se7en
The opening scene shows the two cops; one who plays the good cop and another person who plays the bad cop. The sub-genre I received from just watching the opening scene was that it was crime thriller. The mood was a mysterious  as we were not getting the location of the setting. In addition, the setting was dark and grey. The film mostly took place in rainy, dreary and dark days; to match to the sub-genre and the characters of the film.

Drive
The opening sequence for driver we watched did not have a lot of the conventions of a thriller. The room is not lit- the only source of any light is from outside street lamps. At the beginning we don't see the characters facial features who is talking, but only a Scorpio print on his jacket. Use of non-diegetic sounds.The radio was a contrapuntal sound as it didn't reflect with what was happening outside; a car getaway. 

Kill Bill
The openiong of Kill Bill was a duplicate of James Bond film, which was re-edited to fit into the order of the thriller-intertexuality. There are gasping sounds at the beginning, but we are not aware of the source of the sound. In addition with clucking sounds of boots from an unknown source. Element of another film; Psycho sound after she gets shot.